"It's YOUR fault; you might have written, and had
him meet us at the settlement." "You wanted to take him by
surprise!" "I didn't. You know if I'd written that we were
coming, he'd have taken good care to run away from us." "Yes, to
some more inaccessible place." "There can be none worse than
this," etc., etc. But it was so clearly evident that nothing was
to be done but to go forward, that even in the midst of their
wrangling they straggled on in Indian file toward the distant
cabin, sinking ankle-deep in the yielding sand, punctuating their
verbal altercation with sighs, and only abating it at a scream from
the elder lady.
"Where's Maria?"
"Gone on ahead!" grunted the younger gentleman, in a bass voice, so
incongruously large for him that it seemed to have been a
ventriloquistic contribution by somebody else.
It was too true. Maria, after adding her pungency to the general
conversation, had darted on ahead. But alas! that swift Camilla,
after scouring the plain some two hundred feet with her demitrain,
came to grief on an unbending tussock and sat down, panting but
savage.
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